Mel Gibson turns from Christ's Passion to Mayan blood rites
David Smith
Sunday October 30, 2005
The Observer
His most recent film, featuring flayings and floggings and with
dialogue in Aramaic and Latin, was a worldwide hit. Now Mel Gibson has
announced his next project will be set against the bloodthirsty
backdrop of the Mayan empire - this time in an ancient dialect called
Yucatec.
Gibson's The Passion of the Christ last year became the most successful
independent film ever made, grossing more than =A3200 million worldwide.
It was also a hit in America's bible belt, which has long felt ignored
by Hollywood. The star claims that his new thriller, Apocalypto, will
champion another neglected cause, the millions of Maya who still live
in Mexico and Central America, many of whom speak one of the Mayan
languages.
Anyone who turned nauseous at the flesh-ripping carnage of The Passion
should fear for their stomachs again. While Mayan civilisation thrived
for nearly 2,000 years before its mysterious collapse, mastering
astronomy and the construction of pyramids, it also carried out savage
rituals of human sacrifice to appease the gods.
'Hey, this is for kids with strong stomachs,' said Gibson, 49,
responding to a question about plans for children's movies during a
press conference in the Mexican port city of Veracruz, where the
conqueror Hernan Cortes landed in the early 16th century en route to
demolishing the Aztec empire.
The devout Roman Catholic said that the plot of Apocalypto - a Greek
word meaning 'new beginning' - concerns a Maya Indian family man who
'has to overcome tremendous odds to preserve what he values the most'.
The action movie - directed, produced, funded and co-written by, but
not starring Gibson - will employ relatively unknown actors along with
hundreds of extras speaking the Mayan tongue of Yucatec.
'I'm hoping that by focusing on this civilisation we're able to be
introspective about ourselves,' Gibson explained. 'It's set before the
Conquest, so we are using mostly indigenous people and actors from
Mexico City. There's a lot of mystery to the Mayan culture, but it's
just the backdrop to what I'm doing - creating an action adventure of
mythic proportions.'
The star has endeared himself to his hosts by offering =A3560,000 to
reconstruction efforts following Hurricane Stan, which devastated
Mexico and Central America this month. The Mexican media highlighted
images of Gibson meeting with President Vicente Fox. Tourism officials
are hoping that the film, due to begin shooting in mid-November, will
pump =A311m into the economy.
A vanished civilisation
1) Mayan civilisation stretched across much of what is now southern
Mexico, Belize and Guatemala and endured for nearly two millenniums,
disappearing around AD 900.
2) Despite lacking the cartwheel or metal tools, the Maya built
pyramids, palaces and courts for a ritual ball game. They inhabited
vast cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal and Uxmal.
3) Mayan astronomers mapped the phases of celestial objects, especially
the Moon and Venus, and tracked a solar year of 365 days. They
developed mathematics, using a base number of 20, and had a concept of
zero. The civilisation was sufficiently stable to have a word for a
400-year time period.
4) The collapse of their civilisation, which occurred centuries before
the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, has long been a mystery.
Theories include civil war, invasion, migration, disease, over-farming,
over-population and drought.
source:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1604570,00.html
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